Evening Song
by Eilonwy Grace
Summary: When Katniss' son falls in love, she is forced to face a part of her past she'd rather leave behind. Told from the perspective of Katniss' daughter.


Falling in love quickly and staying there forever is kind of a Mellark family specialty.

When I was young, I loved listening to my father tell me the story of how he had fallen in love with my mother. He would only tell me when she wasn't around, of course, since if she was in earshot she would inevitably roll her eyes and scoff at him for being sentimental and silly. My sweetest memories, the ones I will never forget, are of him and me in our warm, cheery kitchen, sticky dough beneath our floury hands as he recounted that tale. When I was younger, I stood on a stool by his side; as I grew tall enough the stool was safely stowed away, but the time together never lost its preciousness, nor the old story its fascination. My mother's two braids, hanging down her back. How she couldn't wait to sing the song for the class. The way the birds stopped to listen.

"And just like that," he'd always say, "I was a goner."

That was my favorite part. Often I'd say the words along with him, and then we'd grin at each other in a silly sort of way which would inevitably turn into a hearty laugh. Sometimes the noise would bring my mother into the kitchen, and she'd just stand in the doorway, her hands on her hips, and stare at the two of us with a bemused expression on her face – until slowly, the ghost of a smile would appear on her lips, and my father would go wrap his great floury arms around her, squeezing her until she had to give in and join our laughter.

I loved imagining my parents, soft and innocent little children. My mother's face unguarded, her slate gray eyes free from the unshed tears that now always seem to lurk just under the surface. My father's body whole, his lovely smile pure and untempered by suffering.

It's been years now since he died. That's another night I know I will never forget, even if I was hardly conscious for most of it. Influenza hit the district hard that year, and both my father and I fell ill around the same time. I myself was close to death, or so they tell me, but pulled through. Death, however, was not as benevolent to my father, who had perhaps already cheated it one time too many.

It was my younger brother, Colm, who told me. His face was like stone as he held my hand and whispered the words that broke through my haze of fever, piercing my heart to its depths. I don't remember if I cried; I think I must have. For a week I lay in bed, longing for my father to come to me, to smooth my dark hair from my eyes and tell me that everything would be all right - hardly even able to process that he never would again. It was not until I was well on the mend that I realized I hadn't seen my mother since the first few days of my illness.

"She's shut herself in her room," Colm told me when I asked him. "She's not eating the meals we leave her. No one's seen her for a week."

_You have to go to her_, I could almost hear my father telling me. _You can't let her be alone_.

And so later that night, when the nurse had fallen asleep in the chair beside my bed, I pulled myself out from my covers for the first time what seemed a lifetime, and crawled across the cold hall to my mother's locked door.

"Mother, it's me," I whispered, knocking gently. "Mary. Would you open the door?"

No reply. As I stood, shivering in the cold, my eyes fell on the untouched tray of food that someone had left outside the door. I knelt to take the now cold bowl of stew in my hands, lifting it to my face, and the sweet smell of carrots and beef somehow broke something within me. My mother had always been so adamant that food never be wasted, that we eat what was put in front of us and never leave anything behind. Thick tears rolled down my cheeks and strange animal-like wails rose from the back of my throat; never in my eighteen years had I wept like that before, collapsed before a bowl of cold stew in a deserted hallway.

After some time I heard the click of the door, and looked up to see my mother staring down at me. Her face was gaunt, tormented by nightmares I couldn't even begin to imagine, and as I watched it seemed to break into a million pieces, and she crumpled down to the ground beside me, her thin arms wrapped tightly around my body.

"I'm sorry," was all she could say, over and over again, her tears thick on my neck. "I'm so, so sorry."

It was a strange inversion, me being the one that had to comfort her – but in some odd way, it helped me more than anything else could have, having to be the one with strength. My father had always been the strong one, and it was nice to think of that part of him living on in me. So I hugged my mother back, and let her tears fall with mine, and when we had both fallen silent, I helped her stand and led her back inside her bedroom.

"I'm so sorry for leaving you," she sniffed. "I swore I'd never do that, not like my mother did. I'll never do it again, Mary, I promise. I'll never leave you alone again."

And she hasn't. The next two years weren't easy for her, but she never retreated from us again. At first, I didn't know how she would be able to make it through the day. Her eyes kept straying to the empty place at the table, to the nearest doorway, as though my father would be arriving any minute. But the minutes and hours would pass, and it was more than I could bear to see the agony in her eyes as the reality of his death once more crashed around her. The rumor around town was that the loss would kill her. But my mother, she's a survivor.

And, in time, there was day, when Colm and my mother and I were sitting around the kitchen table and Colm said something funny – he's very quiet and somber, usually, but he inherited our father's wit, and it can take you by surprise if you're not expecting it – and the three of us just laughed and laughed. We laughed until there were tears in our eyes, at least my mother's and mine. Colm just grew solemn and severe, like he always does when he's touched deeply, and I think that was the first time that the three of us felt like Daddy was still there with us, in some way that we couldn't describe, and that he wanted us to keep laughing. That he wanted us to be happy.

Things, after that, sort of went back to normal, or at least as normal as they possibly could. I graduated from school and properly took over my father's bakery. My mother went back to hunting, which she hadn't done for months following my father's death.

And then Colm fell in love.

It was an unexpected development. Colm keeps mostly to himself, and I'd never seen him chase after any of the girls at school. Sometimes he looked – but that was all, all until Wren Groves moved to District 12.

Wren came from District 10 and was all dainty and blonde and fair – except for her eyes, which were a dark gray that somehow seemed to swirl with the forgotten coal dust of the old shut-down mine. She lived with her father at the edge of town, and although she was pretty enough to be of interest to more than one pair of masculine eyes, like Colm, she stuck to herself most of the time.

I don't know how they met, exactly. Maybe at school, although Wren's a year younger than he is. Maybe out in the woods, where Colm spends most of his free time, fishing and hunting and playing the fiddle. The fiddle was a gift from Haymitch – there's actually a kind of funny story about it. When Colm was maybe four or five, Haymitch told him that if he took care of his geese, he could have half of the profit they made at market. Haymitch, of course, was drunk when he made the promise, but my brother was too small to know not to take his word for truth, and for months he silently and faithfully took care of those geese.

When it came time to sell them, Colm made sure that he accompanied Haymitch to the market. I wasn't there, but my father, who was, said there was quite a scene when the little boy demanded the pledged portion. Haymitch, looking forward to a binge, didn't even remember making the promise and flatly refused to turn over the profits. Even my father's good-natured rejoinders had no effect and Haymitch, cursing loudly, took his money in a huff and bought himself enough liquor to last for months.

Colm didn't say anything, but for months afterward, he glared. This might not sound like much, but Colm has my mother's eyes and, trust me, they can be very intimidating, even in a five year old boy. At last Haymitch couldn't take it anymore. I don't know how he did it, but somehow he traded or begged or borrowed for the fiddle, and offered it to Colm as a peace offering. After some consideration, Colm accepted it, and things between them went back to normal, or as normal as the strange relationship between Haymitch and our family can be.

Anyway, I like to imagine that he was playing the fiddle when Wren stumbled on him in the woods, and that she was enchanted by him, and they struck up a friendship. I don't know if it happened that way or not. Colm isn't the most talkative person, and although I'm getting to know Wren better, she's pretty reticent about a lot of things, too.

I don't even know when Colm would have told me about their relationship, if I hadn't stumbled upon the two of them kissing back behind the woodshed one spring morning when they thought no one was at home.

"I'm going to marry her," was all Colm said by way of explanation, his slate gray eyes as firm as the hand which held Wren's pale, slender one.

When Colm gets an idea in his head, there's no going back on it – and besides, falling hard in love is a Mellark family tradition, and who was I to wage a losing war against genetics?

"What are you going to tell mother?" I asked, as the three of us sat on the rough-hewn bench that Daddy had built the summer before he died, swinging our legs beneath us like little children. "She'll say you're too young. Wren still has a whole 'nother year of school, and I thought you were set on going to college?"

It was a sort of new thing in Panem, this college idea, the brain-child of some politician in the Capitol. One had just opened down in District 11, and although I was too busy with the bakery to have any particular interest in it, Colm had decided he wanted to take a degree in agriculture and had been working toward it for the past year.

"I'll wait a year for her to finish, and then we can go together. Mother will come around."

"Not sure about my father, though," said Wren, her delicate eyebrows creasing. "He doesn't know, either, and I'm not sure how he'll take it when he does."

"You don't have to tell him about the wanting to get married part, at least not at first," I suggested. "Let's invite him over for dinner and give him a chance to get to know us and see that we're good people. And then after he starts liking us, you can tell him about being in love with Colm."

"My dad isn't much of a people person," hesitated Wren. "I don't think he's stepped foot off of our property since we moved to District 12."

"Well, then, that just means that a friendly visit between neighbors is far overdue. Our dad would have hated that, having a neighbor so nearby and not reaching out to them. Ask him to come over on Friday evening. I'll make dinner, and we can all get to know one another. Does your dad sing or play chess or anything?"

"He doesn't do much of anything. When he's not out hunting, he just sort of sits in front of the fire, lost in his thoughts for hours at a time."

"Sounds like he and our mother will get along perfectly," I said. "They have the exact same hobbies."

Wren had to smile a little at this. "Well, I'll try," she conceded, but the uncertain look on her face as we parted had me half convinced me that we were never going to see her or her father again. But she stopped by the bakery the next afternoon, her face was glowing.

"I told him everything," she said. "I couldn't help it; as soon as I started it all came spilling out. But he's not mad. He said he's even looking forward to meeting whoever it is I've grown to love."

"So you do love him? Colm, I mean?"

"Of course I do."

"Good," I smiled, and threw myself into preparation for Friday's dinner with a vengeance.

Friday rolled around, and both Colm and I were a bundle of nerves. Colm, of course, didn't show it in any way that would have been noticeable to outsiders, but I could tell because he was even more quiet and attentive than usual.

"That's them now," he said, having peered out the front window for the fifty-sixth time that evening. We lived in the same house that we had all our lives, the one that my father built for my mother after they married. Before then, they had lived in the small neighborhood still known as the Victor's Village, but the houses there have long since been turned into hospitals and orphanages.

"It seemed the right time to start something new," I can remember my father saying, when I asked him why he had wanted to move.

Wren's father was not at all like I expected. From the way that she had spoken about him, I had expected a small, sniveling old man with pale, miserable eyes and a balding head. Mr. Groves, however, was tall and muscular, with a confident bearing and a handsome face. His salt and pepper hair fell over his slate gray eyes in a way that made me think he had probably broken quite a few hearts in his day – could possibly even be breaking them now, if he ever decided to leave the reclusive life behind.

"Daddy," said Wren, wringing her hands in front of the pale pink dress she had donned for the occasion. "This is the boy I was telling you about. Colm. And this is his sister, Mary."

"Nice to meet you, Mr. Groves," I said, blushing a little at the very dashing smile I was given in return. His gaze hardened as it next turned to Colm, taking in every inch of him – from the top of his curly blonde head to the bottom of his worn leather shoes – as though he already disliked him.

"How old are you?"

"Eighteen."

"And what are your intentions with my daughter?"

"I want to marry her," he replied coolly, staring nearly level into eyes almost the exact same color as his. A slight frown passed over Mr. Groves' handsome features.

"What do your parents have to say about that?" he asked.

"My father is dead, but I know he would have been pleased for me to find a girl like Wren."

"And your mother?"

"Where _is _our mother?" I asked, suddenly remembering that none of us had told her we were expecting company. This was the only way to manage her; it was likely that, had she been told, she would have perversely taken off to spend the evening with Haymitch or in some other revolting locale. But perhaps she had done so anyway. Sometimes she did that, just up and disappeared for a few hours at a time.

"Coming up the walk," said Colm.

We all turned to consider the slight woman walking up the front path, a bow slung over her shoulder and two squirrels hanging from the rope in her hands. There was a bounce in her step and she was humming something underneath her breath.

"Mother," I called, suddenly inexplicably nervous. "We have company. Colm brought his girlfriend for us to meet."

She looked up. The smile disappeared immediately; her entire face drained of color. It was almost as though she had seen a ghost.

"Mother," I repeated, very uncomfortable now. "I've already made us dinner."

The two squirrels fell unheeded to the ground as my mother quickly nocked her arrow and aimed it at Mr. Groves. "What are you doing here?" she demanded. There was something strange in the way she said _you_, both fierce and oddly intimate, as if years of something I couldn't begin to place lay behind the innocuous little world. I had never heard her say anything like it before.

"I didn't know he was your son." His tone was the same as my mother's, full of loathing and longing and remembrance, and utterly as incomprehensible. "He's your son."

"Well spotted." My mother's voice was acid.

"Come on, Wren, we're going," said Mr. Groves, grabbing his daughter's wrist so tightly that it made her yelp out in pain. I watched, dumbfounded, as he hurried her away, my mother's bow all the while trained on his head.

"NO!" shouted Colm. My mother lowered her bow and the two of us simply stared at him; it was the first time in my life that I had ever heard him raise his voice. "You can't go, not yet."

"Colm…" my mother muttered.

My brother ran to the end of the walk, his hands closing over Mr. Groves', attempting to extricate Wren's wrist with all his strength. "You promised to stay for dinner. You have to stay for dinner."

Mr. Groves hesitated, eyes dark as he glanced uncertainly at my mother.

"Did you promise, Gale?" she asked in that strange, too-knowing tone.

"I didn't know he was your son." He seemed to be begging her to believe it.

My mother scowled, a fierce battle playing out on her face. At last: "You can't break a promise. Come in and eat dinner. Mary's a good cook."

"Please, Daddy," Wren pleaded.

Very slowly, Mr. Groves loosened his grip and took a small step back towards the house, as though my mother were a rabid animal to be treated with the utmost caution. "Only because of Wren."

"And I'm only doing it because of Colm," my mother replied.

And with that, they marched into the house, Wren and Colm following behind. This left me to bring up the rear, which I did, gathering the forgotten squirrels and wishing that I had thought to invite my best friend Daisy. It would certainly have been nice to have someone to discuss this bizarre turn of events with. How had my mother known Mr. Groves' given name? They had to know each other, but how? As far as I knew, my mother had never been to District 10 long enough to make any friends there. Maybe he was someone that she had met during the war?

"Are you coming, Mary?" It was my mother, standing in the front doorway as though nothing out of the ordinary had transpired. I had never met a more obstinate contrarian, nor one more cloaked in layers of mystery. Twenty years we had lived under the same roof and did I know her at all?

"Yes, mother."

She disappeared and I followed after her, depositing the squirrels in the icebox before joining the others at the table. Wren and Colm had busied themselves with bringing out the dishes, and as soon as I took my seat I could understand why. My mother sat at one end of the table, Mr. Groves at the other – and the air between them was as thick and toxic as coal dust.

"Would you like some vegetables, Wren?" my mother asked sweetly, taking the bowl and passing it to her. Colm and I exchanged worried glances. Our mother was usually only sweet when she was concealing something deadly.

"Yes, thank you, Mrs. Mellark."

Mr. Groves winced slightly, as though someone had just prodded an old wound. My mother considered him with an air of decided amusement.

"So, how was it exactly that you had no idea that your daughter was in love with my son?"

"Until today, I didn't even know his first name, much less his last."

"Daddy," asked Wren, her voice small, "do you and Mrs. Mellark know one another?"

"No," they replied together. We stared at them in exasperation and bewilderment.

My mother speared a piece of chicken and started cubing it violently. We all sat in silence, watching her as she stuck the pieces one by one in her mouth. It was only after the piece was half consumed that she took a long sip of water and cleared her throat. "Yes," she admitted.

"Yes," agreed Mr. Groves.

"How?" I asked. "Mr. Groves is from District 10."

My mother smiled wryly at him. "Groves? District 10?"

He shrugged, looking almost embarrassed. "We moved to District 10 nine years ago, after… after Wren's mother died. Groves was her family name. I thought it would be… easier… to go by here."

"Gale Groves," repeated my mother, rolling the words experimentally over her tongue. "Catchy."

A wave of anger washed over Mr. Groves' features, and his hands were fists as he stood. "I don't want to bother you. We should go. Come on, Wren."

"No, I'm sorry, please stay." There was a gentleness in my mother's voice that she usually reserved only for the family circle; it seemed to escape her without thought or effort. "I'll call you that if you want."

"You don't have to call me anything."

"Daddy." Wren's voice was pleading.

Slowly he sank back into his chair. "You and your kids just call me Gale. And Wren and I will just call you Katniss, okay?"

"Okay," agreed my mother, attacking another piece of chicken. Mr. Groves – Gale – ladled a healthy portion of mashed potatoes onto his plate and, despite all three of our best efforts, neither of them spoke again for the remainder of the meal.

"I have dessert," I said desperately as I cleared away the dinner plates. "Why don't you guys go sit on the porch and I'll bring it to you? I'll bring coffee, too. Colm can play for you while you're waiting."

Wren and I exchanged anxious glances as our respective parents stood and followed her outside. This was not going well. At least with Colm playing, the silence would not be as awkward or deafening. I breathed a sigh of relief as I heard the first notes float through the open window and, I'll admit, took my time in dishing the blackberry cobbler into plates and preparing the coffee things.

Although Colm writes his own songs too, that night he mostly stuck to old mountain airs, the sort of songs every child in the district grows up with their parents singing to them as they slip into sleep. Both my mother and Wren's father seemed to have relaxed somewhat, and Gale even smiled at me as I passed him his dish of cobbler.

"Why did you make this, Mary?" My mother frowned as she accepted her own plate.

"It's your favorite," I said, a little bit hurt by her tone. "You always say that blackberries taste like summer."

"They do," agreed Gale quietly. My mother flushed and jammed a spoonful into her mouth, training her eyes on Colm and setting her face like stone.

He played a few more songs, and then he and Wren slipped silently into the twilight. Neither our mother nor Wren's father seemed to notice much, and I busied myself in clearing away the dessert things. I was in the kitchen washing up when I became aware of low voices floating through the open window.

"When did it happen?" asked Gale.

"Two years ago." My mother's voice was emotionless, empty. "Influenza. Mary nearly died of it, too."

"I'm sorry, Katniss." His regret sounded genuine.

"It was going to happen sooner or later."

"It doesn't make it any easier when it does."

"Yeah, well, that's life, isn't it? What about your wife? What happened to her?"

"She had always been weak, and never really recovered from childbirth. She died of consumption when Wren was eight."

"Wren's a pretty girl. She must have been beautiful."

"Yeah." His voice was quiet, meditative, and I had to strain to catch it. "That tribute from 2, your first year in the Games. Clove. They were cousins."

"Oh." My mother's voice was strangled.

"Their family wasn't anything special back in 2. That's why so many of them volunteered, trying to elevate their standing, to provide for their families. Ruby's father was just a common worker. He died in the war. Never made it out of the Nut."

My mother was quiet for a long time.

"Did she know?" she finally asked.

"Yeah, she knew. My part in it is still broadcast all over the country. I'm a war hero, didn't you know?"

"I guess I've heard so once or twice." The evening stillness stretched long between them before she added, as suddenly as though the words were torn out of her: "And she didn't care? She still wanted to marry you, knowing…"

"Knowing that I was responsible for her father's death? Yeah, she still wanted to marry me. To this day I still can't understand why. But that's… that's just the sort of person she was. Different from me."

"Different," my mother whispered.

"Until Ruby… well, I was well on my way to becoming Haymitch Abernathy, Jr. I worked all day and drank all night, just trying to… to get it to go away, you know? But she saw something in me, something worth saving. Like I said, different. I never completely understood her."

Silence fell between them once more, and I wondered if my mother was thinking about my father. I don't think she ever completely understood him, either.

"Why did you come back?" she asked at last.

He sighed. "She wanted me to. Said I couldn't run away forever. I tried. And after she died I ran away to 10, thinking I could outrun her, too. I couldn't. She just became another thing that I couldn't put behind me. Like Prim. And you."

My breath caught in my throat and I leaned closer to the window, straining for my mother's response. It was a really long time before she whispered, "I always half wanted you to come back."

He laughed, a low, bitter sound with a hint of sadness. "I always half wanted to."

The two fell silent. The wooden swing creaked underneath them and there was a howl from the forest. I was just wondering if I ought to go back out again when my mother asked: "You and Wren going to be sticking around?"

"I don't know if we have a choice. That son of yours seems determined to take her away from me, with or without my consent."

"He knows his mind, Colm does," said my mother proudly, and I felt sure of what I had always half suspected: that he was her favorite. There was a kinship between the two of them that mystified me, perhaps as the kinship between me and my father had always slightly bewildered her.

That was the beginning of a new season of life for us, although I suppose, in a way, not much has really changed. I bake. Mother hunts. Haymitch drinks. But there are new things now, too. Colm and Wren's little daughter, standing next to me on a stool as I bake, listening solemnly to the family stories I inherited from my parents, and the ones I've added myself. The determination in her eyes as she tries to get her chubby little arms to maneuver around the tiny bow her grandmother made for her, and the way that she and Gale laugh, their voices swelling in pride as they talk about taking her with them on a hunting trip one of these days, and how she's going to be the best hunter in the whole district someday.

It's a different life from the one I miss so dearly, the one with my father in it – but sometimes, somehow, I get the feeling that Daddy and Wren's mother both are standing with us in silent approval. Laughing along with our jokes and empathizing with our tears, maybe even shaking their heads in amused resignation at the occasional knock-out, drag-out fight that surfaces between Gale and my mother. That, in whatever way they can be, they _know _and are glad about the way things have turned out.

At least, that's what I like to imagine. I think there are worse things a girl could pretend.


End file.
